The Innocents Abroad

The Innocents Abroad, or A New Pilgrim's Progress

By Mark Twain

A detailed narrative of a long excursion with a group of fellow travelers to the Holy Land shortly after the Civil War aboard the vessel Quaker City. The humorous account covers his visits to Paris, Italy, Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land. At times irreverent, it is always entertaining.

So I finally, finally finished The Innocents Abroad. I think it took me longer to read it than it took Mark Twain to get on a steamship, sail over to Europe, tour the continent, head out to the Holy Land, visit approximately one million sights of interest, and return to the United States. It's a long frickin' book!  And it's a wee bit old-fashioned, so you sometimes get ahead of yourself if you skim too much.  And the second half is basically all biblical, which I have very little interest in or knowledge of, so that part was semi-nonsensical to me.

However, do not let that dissuade you from picking this up! I found it to be a delightful travelogue, and very comedic, a la his usual style, even if it did suffer at points from a light coating of racism and long-windedness.  To be fair, I don't think the racism was as bad as it could have been considering the time period and circumstances.  Twain is pretty cynical in general, and rarely complimentary of any ethnicity or country (with the possible exception of Russia, amusing in retrospect), and I would agree that western travelers can find traveling in eastern countries very disorienting and the begging to be unpleasant, so I didn't find it (myself) to put me off the book entirely. I mean, The Egg and I raised a lot more of my eyebrows and that was written by Betty MacDonald in 1945. 

This is one book that I would really love to read an annotated version of. From the beginning, just when he's talking about the hooded women of the Azores, and sights of Pompeii, and then going into the valleys of Damascus and Syria, and the seashell path in the Caucuses, I just really wanted to see pictures of what he describes so evocatively, and chart their path, and get historical background.  I found myself on wikipedia getting lost in the history of the tsars and looking up old black and white pictures, and color pictures and maps and just taking a thousand little trips as I joined Twain on his journey.  

It is very, very long, but it was never tiresome, and there's a tartness to it that cuts through a lot of the length. And it did feel immediate too - even early Twain was a master at pinpointing just the things which make you feel like you're there with him and his fellow "pilgrims". 

2: A Book Set on a Plane, Train, or Cruise Ship

Raybearer

Raybearer

By Jordan Ifueko

Nothing is more important than loyalty. But what if you've sworn to protect the one you were born to destroy?

Tarisai has always longed for the warmth of a family. She was raised in isolation by a mysterious, often absent mother known only as The Lady. The Lady sends her to the capital of the global empire of Aritsar to compete with other children to be chosen as one of the Crown Prince's Council of 11. If she’s picked, she'll be joined with the other Council members through the Ray, a bond deeper than blood. That closeness is irresistible to Tarisai, who has always wanted to belong somewhere. But The Lady has other ideas, including a magical wish that Tarisai is compelled to obey: Kill the Crown Prince once she gains his trust. Tarisai won't stand by and become someone’s pawn--but is she strong enough to choose a different path for herself? With extraordinary world-building and breathtaking prose, Raybearer is the story of loyalty, fate, and the lengths we're willing to go for the ones we love.

 

I started out comparing this to The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, because it was about a sheltered kid who goes out into the larger world and winds up getting into adventures, and then we skipped forward several years and that fell by the wayside, and then we took a trip into the bush and I got Black Leopard, Red Wolf vibes, but only slightly, since that book is definitely was more adult than Raybearer, and I guess then I got kind of like, Tamora Pierce vibes? Not that any of that is bad!  And frankly, it didn't feel derivative the way that Children of Blood and Bone did (very strong Avatar: The Last Airbender plot) even though it was vaguely reminiscent of all of them. 

So there's been a push for more diverse cultures and settings in sci-fi and fantasy (Black Sun is a good example of that) and while I appreciate that this was not set in faux-medieval Europe, I did feel, at times, that the broad geographic and cultural empire of Aritsar felt very "pan-African" at times to the detriment of the setting.  We clearly see East Asian and South Asian influences and as a result, it felt more like the other provinces kind of melded together as "African".  I know there's a lot of diaspora in current Nigeria, where the author's background is, but I just keep thinking of that old chestnut, which is the more specific you can be in telling the story, the more general the appeal.  Would keeping it tighter geographically and culturally have given it more depth?

There was also commentary on social justice and law reform which seemed influenced by current events. I initially got very excited, as it seemed like we would get into real debates on social ills and quick fixes and unseen causes when there was (a) the initial question about certain provinces not performing well on the mind tests, and two answers of: are they just bad at it in general, or is it because alphabetically, their names are last called for food and they're hungry, and then (b) Tarisai's attempt to create a child foster care and protective services process, butting up against the practical concerns of: money.  But after those two early examples, it seemed like we just went straight into: the villains make bad laws and the heroes make good laws.  [Spoiler alert: I started reading the second book and I'm only a chapter in so far, and I am incredibly disappointed with how the book starts, Tarisai basically deciding that if she likes the person, then they should get off scott-free, never mind that they committed murder in cold blood - for very little reason!  A very bad murder! And Tarisai is the high judge, who is trying to create an equitable system!  The second book treats her breaking this person out of prison as like, a hijink for the greater good.  If that doesn't get addressed, I'm going to have a very different impression of the story. And further spoiler - I read one chapter and then just stopped, for like, months.  It was not beguiling me.]

In hindsight, I like this book while I was reading it, and I was excited about the second, but then, after getting only a little ways into the second, the problems I had with it were exacerbated and ultimately I just wasn't excited about continuing the story, although I definitely will, for the challenge.  Tarisai has a childish outlook and approach that works fine in the beginning, but begins to be grating as we get further along and she should be more mature.  But I do like the setting, and the storyline, and I appreciate the familial relationships that the Raybearer and the council present, although again, it's one of those things that you kind of go, "How did they ever succeed in erasing the second Raybearer in the first place?" in terms of plausibility.  Some suspension of disbelief is required.

 

44: A Duology (Part 1)

 

When No One is Watching

When No One is Watching

By Alyssa Cole

Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.

But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.

When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear?

I struggled with this one - I'm not sure where exactly it's lacking, but it did feel lacking to me.  I didn't warm up the characters right away, or even at all.  They switch off viewpoints between Theo and Sydney and we're introduced to both as they're drunk/hungover and aimless.  Sydney is admittedly paranoid and kind of belligerent, Theo is a weird passive aggressive doormat.  Both have "secrets," which are kind of out of left field, albeit nothing too outre for the genre.  They're not really people I like spending time with, or feel empathetic towards.  So that's strike one.

Strike two is maybe the concept itself.  It's basically a "what if gentrification was actually a legit conspiracy to eliminate black people from a community (instead of simply being a convenient byproduct) and people were being murdered and experimented on" kind of concept.  Not a bad idea, per se, but... I don't know, there were thriller-ish elements - the weird cabbie, the drugged man, the fake meter reader - but we also spent a lot of time just rehashing basic history, i.e., the seizure of land from anyone non-white, if the land was valuable at that time, the racial policing, yada yada yada.  Like yeah, it's important for background, but it also slows down the pace a loooooot.

It's compared to Get Out in the description, but I feel like it's a less successful take on the genre. Maybe the idea just lends itself better to a theatrical presentation. Maybe it's because there's never really a point at which any white person (other than Theo and possibly Jenn/Jen) is even marginally suspected to be a good person? Like, forget microaggressions, it's pretty much just straight up aggression.  I think it loses some of the thriller feel here too, because we're not second guessing whether this is actually happening - it's actually happening, and it's not that subtle. Maybe if we spent all the narration with Sydney? Then Theo could have been a wild card, and added more uncertainty to the story. 

I liked the incorporation of the old folks into the "actually onto the villains' game the whole time" role, but feel like they were underused - again, with main characters like Sydney and Theo, I think bringing the old people in (and potentially putting them at risk, raising the stakes) would make you care more about the characters.  

I also appreciated how all of the MANY people Sydney and Theo killed (at least, like 5-10, right? I lost track at the rejuvenation meeting) were just elided over since the corporation took care of everything.  Really? How convenient. And convenient that both Sydney and Theo were like, cold blooded shooters. We spend all this time really laying the groundwork for how realistic a conspiracy this could be, and then blow it all up with the dumb-enough-to-use-a-neighborhood-chatroom-to-lay-bare-their-plots, plus don't get me started on all the Wild West shooting goin' on in them thar hospital.

What's weird to me is how many people downvoted it solely because of the language.  I mean, there were a lot of other issues besides the cursing, for sure.  It felt kind of messy.  I'm not big into Cole's other romance novels, so it might just be her style, but it fell flat to me.  Again, because the reader knows the corporation is behind all of it, but it takes so long for Sydney and Theo to catch up that we don't have a lot of time for unfolding the conspiracy.  It's pretty much: hey, everyone we interacted with in the book is a bad guy and they're having a meeting this Tuesday. Literally, even the lawyer for her mother is not merely lazy and uncaring (which would have still been fine for drama too! We need those uncaring bystanders and again - uncertainty builds tension!) but actively involved.  Sometimes it can be frustrating to get done with "the bad guy" only to find out they're only a small part of the bigger picture, and here's an even bigger and badder guy we never suspected, but this was frustrating too.  We never even catch a glimpse of the snake's head.

33: A Social-Horror Book

A Winter's Promise

A Winter's Promise (Book One of the Mirror Visitor Quartet)

By Christelle Dabos

Plain-spoken, headstrong Ophelia cares little about appearances. Her ability to read the past of objects is unmatched in all of Anima and, what’s more, she possesses the ability to travel through mirrors, a skill passed down to her from previous generations. Her idyllic life is disrupted, however, when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, a taciturn and influential member of a distant clan. Ophelia must leave all she knows behind and follow her fiancé to Citaceleste, the capital of a cold, icy ark known as the Pole, where danger lurks around every corner and nobody can be trusted. There, in the presence of her inscrutable future husband, Ophelia slowly realizes that she is a pawn in a political game that will have far-reaching ramifications not only for her but for her entire world.

The World of the Arks

Long ago, following a cataclysm called the Rupture, the world was shattered into many floating celestial islands, now known as arks. Over each, the spirit of an omnipotent and immortal ancestor abides. The inhabitants of these arks each possess a unique power. Ophelia, with her ability to read the pasts of objects, must navigate this fantastic, disjointed, perilous world using her trademark tenacity and quiet strength. 

 I found myself intrigued by the book description and sale pitches ("Game of Thrones meets Pride and Prejudice!"), and checked it out.  I was having trouble with this entry anyway, since BookTok seems to exist solely to promote popular dreck, and I'd read mostly everything I was at all intrigued by. And I'm in the middle of Innocents Abroad, which is fine, I'm enjoying it, but it's also as long as the universe, and I'm still in Italy, despite reading for almost two weeks. Anyway, I wanted a bit of change, although Winter's Promise is also long. 

I really regretted it for at least the first 40% of the book.  Let me summarize it for you: Ophelia finds out she has to marry someone from the Pole, she mopes around, breaks things (accidentally), says very little, mopes around, breaks more things, gets yelled at, mopes around, gets packed up and shipped up north, and is warned no one can be trusted, she mopes around, breaks more things, tries to find a bit of adventure out there, is verbally and physically abused, they move, repeat ad infinitum.  There's no sense of development, achieving anything in the first half of the book.  Ophelia is a chess piece, basically, and just goes where she's put.  (Breaking things as she goes, all the fucking time).  I honestly am not even entirely sure of the point of the first half of the book, or why we spend any time on Anima, her home ark.  It all seems very dreary and pointless, and it's not helped because we're basically housebound on the north pole for most of it. Plus, and this was really only an issue for me in the first few chapters, the characters have weird fakeish conversations where they spout out worldbuilding information instead of letting us arrive at it more naturally. The scenes with her godfather really grated on me.  

And Ophelia herself is a difficult heroine to root for: she has no power (within the setting she's placed, she has magical mirror/object reading powers), she's apparently disliked or hated by everyone she meets, she doesn't listen to good advice, and she has no self-determination or autonomy - she spends almost every minute in the book just getting manipulated or moved into scenarios by various people around her, and letting things happen to her (to be fair, the one time she tries to get out on her own it ends disastrously, but what can you expect when you go out adventuring and you know you have a bad sense of direction and make no effort to have a safe route home). It feels repetitive and aimless.

And yet, for all that, I found myself really getting into the last half of the book.  It picks up dramatically when we've moved once again, to Clairdelune, the "protected" sanctuary of the Ambassador, where Ophelia has to pretend to be a valet, and there are other characters to interact with.  There's actually some inklings of a plot, some activity, more development, etc., etc. And then we hit a denouement (where we find out that we have to move because Ophelia screwed the pooch again) and then the book ends, abruptly, literally in an elevator on the way to see someone. I mean, I guess it worked, since I;m checking out book 2, but it's not what I would call a really enjoyable experience.  I just can't foresee myself ever wanting to re-read this book, even if I ultimately enjoy the series.  

And don't get me started on Ophelia and Thorn's relationship. Maybe I have the benefit of being able to read the dust jackets, so I know they end up together, but her whole attitude towards him also was frustrating to read: she's terrified of him, he's cold to her, she acts out, she kind of depends on him a bit, she thinks he's in love with her (and didn't that seem like just wishful thinking), she's immediately appalled, she's "rude" to him (rude for Ophelia is telling people who are virtual strangers that you don't love them), then she finds out he's kept things from her (OBVIOUSLY) and she's so offended she treats him like public enemy number one.  Duh, he's been lying to you, Ophelia, for one, he's told you exactly jack shit about anything going on.  And you don't love him anyway, and seem horrified by the idea that he loves you (although that seems out of character for him) so CHILL.  It's like, the only decisions Ophelia makes are bad ones.  

Anyway, aside from those three problems (pacing, drippy heroine, drippy heroine who acts out against the hero solely for angst purposes) the world building is actually interesting, seems kind of internally coherent, and I'm interested enough to keep going, at least for now.  But I really can't stand another book that drags on, just beating up on drippy Ophelia the whole time.  Aaaaaand I just read reviews for the next three books and yep, looks like I'm going to be massively disappointed.   Le sigh.

 11: A #BookTok Recommendation